Tuesday, January 13, 2015

I Can't Help but Not to Notice Stories about Insects! Thanks to My Bug Loving Daughter

What can I say, Bug has trained me well and she was pretty excited when I shared this story with her. I don't buy into the Charles Darwin theory that is quoted in the story. I believe in an amazing God who is creator of all things.

What the volunteer in the Butterflies!
exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University saw was
an extremely unusual butterfly—emerged just hours before from its
chrysalis—spreading its delicate wings wide to reveal that it was
exactly half male and half female.Its two right wings—brown with yellow and white spots—were
characteristic of a female of the species, and its two left wings—darker
with green, blue and purple coloring—were typical of a male. The right
wings were shaped differently than the left wings, and the body’s
coloration was exactly split lengthwise down the middle as half male and
half female.

“It slowly opened up, and the wings were so dramatically different,
it was immediately apparent what it was,” said Johnson, a retired
chemical engineer from Swarthmore, Pa., who spotted the delicate
creature one day in October as he was emptying the Butterflies! exhibit’s pupa chamber.

The pupa chamber is where exhibit staff place the chrysalises and
cocoons that are shipped from overseas in order to allow the butterflies
and moths inside to develop and emerge properly. Then they are released
into the exhibit.

Johnson and his supervisor, Butterflies! Coordinator David Schloss, carefully isolated the butterfly and contacted Entomology Collection Manager Jason Weintraub,
a lepidopterist. They knew it was important to save the butterfly for
research by turning it over to Weintraub rather than let it loose in the
exhibit, and run the risk of something happening to it during the
handful of days it would live there.

Weintraub immediately confirmed Johnson’s suspicion. The butterfly was Lexias pardalis, and it had an unusual condition called bilateral gynandromorphy.The Academy plans to put the butterfly specimen on public display for a limited time starting Saturday, Jan. 17.

What does it all mean?

“Gynandromorphism is
most frequently noticed in bird and butterfly species where the two
sexes have very different coloration. It can result from non-disjunction
of sex chromosomes, an error that sometimes occurs during the division
of chromosomes at a very early stage of development,” Weintraub said.

This condition is extremely rare, but scientists don’t know just how
rare it is because it is usually overlooked in most species where the
two sexes look similar to one another.So how did this unusual butterfly end up at the Academy?

This particular Lexias pardalis had been shipped in October
as one pupa among many from a sustainable butterfly farm on Penang
Island in Malaysia. Similar farms in Costa Rica, Kenya and the
Philippines also keep the Butterflies! exhibit supplied with pupae that then transform into butterflies.

The right wings of this preserved Lexias pardais
are characteristic of the female of the species and the left wings are
typical of the male. Photo by J.D. Weintraub/ANSP

Entomology

Lexias pardalis does not have a standard colloquial name,
but it is a member of the butterfly family Nymphalidae, commonly known
as “brush-footed” butterflies. Lexias butterflies live in
tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia. The males sport iridescent
black, greenish-blue wings, while females are larger and have brown
wings with yellow and white spots.

Such differences in the sexes are the result of what Charles Darwin
called sexual selection. They evolved over many thousands of generations
as a result of “choosy” females. These butterflies use color and wing
pattern as signals during courtship. The mates they select pass their
traits on to the next generation.

Preserving the unusual specimen in the Entomology Collection provides
scientists with an important source of information for the study of
comparative morphology, anatomy and evolution—an important reason why
natural history research collections such as the extensive ones at the
Academy are so important.

Collecting insects from natural environments consistently from year
to year also allows scientists to track how a population’s numbers rise
and fall over time. They can understand how factors like climate change
and environmental damage may be affecting insect populations.

Given the large size of the Academy’s Entomology Collection,
which contains more than 3.5 million specimens, it’s very difficult to
determine if it contains other gynandromorphic insect specimens, and
even more difficult to know how frequently they occur in nature.

“In most cases, such specimens are ‘discovered’ in museum collections
by a researcher who is carefully examining reproductive organs of
insects under the microscope and stumbles across a specimen with both
male and female characteristics,” Weintraub said.

For Johnson, a naturalist and Academy volunteer for more than five
years, his discovery was a thrill of a lifetime. “It’s something when
you realize how special a phenomenon it is,” he said.

This special butterfly—preserved and pinned—will be on display at the
Academy for visitors to see from Saturday, Jan. 17, through Monday,
Feb. 16.

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I'm a sweet tea addicted mamma who loves to cuddle up to a good book. I enjoy gardening and playing with my kids. I write about homeschooling, having a special needs child, and about whatever else tickles my fancy. I love the Lord with all my heart!

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